Can Mentoring Help Female Assistant Professors in Economics? An Evaluation by Randomized Trial

Mentoring young female professors in economics, an academic field in which women are historically underrepresented, can lead to an increase in their likelihood of staying in academia and of receiving tenure at a top 30 or 50 economics program in the world, relative to their peers without mentors.

•Women who participated in the two-day mentorship workshop were 10.7 percentage points more likely to have a tenured or tenure-track position than women who did not participate.

•Women who participated in the workshop were 16.3 percentage points more likely to have a tenured or tenure-track position at a top 100 economics department than women who did not participate.

•The workshop participants were also significantly more likely to be tenured in a top 30 institution (by 6.7 percentage points) and in a top 50 institution (by 9 percentage points) as compared to non-participants. Furthermore, workshop participants were significantly less likely to have a tenure position at a 200+ (unranked) institution (by 11.9 percentage points) and also significantly less likely to hold a nonacademic job (by 9.3 percentage points).

•Participants in the workshop were also more likely to be awarded pre-tenure grants and publications, and specifically more likely to have top-tier publications.

Reflecting on their results, researchers expressed that it is surprising that a two-day mentorship event could yield such strong effects. They interpret the reason for these large impacts as the result of the workshop’s aim and success in fostering ongoing and lasting relationships between mentors and mentees.

Individuals apply to participate in the CeMENT workshops. Applicants were divided into groups by research subfield. Within each research subfield, applicants were assigned to either “treatment” – those who got to participate in the mentoring sessions at the American Economic Association’s annual meeting –  or “control” – those who did not get accepted to participate. They assigned more than half of the participants to the treatment group because they wanted to maximize access to the treatment. All participants were told there was excess demand to participate in the program and that participants were randomly chosen from the applicant pool. Except for cohort two, which had a disproportionate amount of academics who had already published in top-tier publications and who were from top ten departments, the control and treatment groups had no statistically significant differences for a variety of characteristics.

Participants circulated a research paper or other related work, such as a grant proposal, to their groups before the workshop. During the workshop, the small groups met to discuss and provide feedback on each participant’s work. This averaged an hour per participant. There were also plenary sessions consisting of panels of the senior mentors during the workshop. Topics included research and publishing, getting grants, professional exposure, teaching, the tenure process and work-life balance.

Participants rated their experience highly after participating in the small groups and plenaries (average score of 6.63/7). To gauge the effects of the treatment, the authors gathered data on the participants and control group members for four to fourteen years after the workshops. They collected publically available data about participants, for example, through Web of Science (for publication information), the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health (for grant information), curriculum vitae published online, and university faculty listings. If tenure status (as of September 2018) could not be determined from publically available sources, researchers contacted the participants to verify.